Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Scholarly Resource List

In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, ACLS highlights scholarly resources on the history, impact, and culture of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, including people with heritage from across the continent of Asia and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.

In addition to our recent Anti-Asian Bias and Asian Empowerment Movements Scholarly Resource List, we hope this page will amplify humanistic scholarship and perspectives that expand our understanding and celebrate the history and culture of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

Similar to our previously published Inclusive Excellence scholarly resource lists, we invited our global community of fellows to share links and PDFs of existing readings, research, curricula, published works, and other resources that they authored or recommend to share with our community.

We welcome ACLS fellows and members to share any additional contributions, questions, or comments with us at [email protected].

Scholarly Resources by ACLS Fellows

ARTICLES

• “The Asian Turn in Mixed Race Studies: Retrospects and Prospects,” Asia Pacific Perspectives, Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2017
  Written by Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• “#Asians4BlackLives: Notes from the Ground” – Amerasia Journal, Volume 45, Issue 2, 2019
  Written by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark, Fu May, Simmy Makhijani, Anh-Thu Pham, Meejin Richart, and Joanne Tien
• “Ask the Expert: Combating Asian Hate and Stereotypes” – California State University San Marcos NewsCenter, May 5, 2021
  Interview with Susie Lan Cassel F’20, Professor, Literature and Writing Studies, California State University, San Marcos
•  “‘Chinamen’ and ‘Delinquent Girls’: Intimacy, Exclusion and a Search for California’s Color Line” – Journal of American History, 104(3), December 2017
  Written by Beth Lew-Williams F’12, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of History, Princeton University
• “Chinese Elites and U.S. Gatekeeping: Racial Discrimination and Class Privilege in Boston’s 1905 King Incident” – Modern American History, Volume 4, Issue 1, March 2021
  Written by Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• “Chinese Exclusion Fiction and Global Histories of Race: HT Tsiang and Theodore Dreiser, 1930” – Genre, 39 (4), December 1, 2006
  Written by Richard Jean So F’12, Assistant Professor, English, McGill University

• “Editor’s Introduction: Refugee Cultures: Forty Years after the Vietnam War” – MELUS, 41(3), Fall 2016
  Co-written by Marguerite Nguyen F’18, Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University
• “The Future Is Ours To Build: Asian American Abolitionist Counterstories for Black Liberation” – Politics, Groups, and Identities, Volume 10, Issue 3, 2021
  Written by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark
• “The Geopolitics of Anti-Asian Violence: Cold War Contradictions In the Era of” Building Back Better” – Journal  of Asian American Studies Volume 25, Number 3, 2022
  Written by Mark Tseng-Putterman F’22, Doctoral Candidate, American Studies, Brown University, and Minju Bae
• “Love and Amateurism in Kelly Loves Tony” – Film Quarterly, Volume 73, Issue 3, Spring 2020
  Written by Viola Lasmana F’20, Lecturer, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
• “A New Chapter in the Taiwan Miracle: Same-Sex Marriage Legalized on Tsai’s Watch” – Fairbank Center Blog, May 22, 2019
  Co-written by Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• “New Orleans and Asian American Literature and Culture” – Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian America Literature and Culture, January 30, 2020
  Written by Marguerite Nguyen F’18, Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University
• “Policing the borders of anti-Asian violence” – Roar Magazine, April 29, 2021
  Written by Mark Tseng-Putterman F’22, Doctoral Candidate, American Studies, Brown University
• “Practicing architecture under the bamboo ceiling: The life and work of iwahiko tsumanuma (Thomas S. Rockrise), 1878–1936” – Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Volume 80, Number 3, September 1, 2021
  Written by Gail Dubrow F’15, Professor of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Public Affairs & Planning, and History, Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians, University of Minnesota, in collaboration with Christina Rockrise, Alyssa Gregory and Sarah Pawlicki
• “‘Scattered like sand’ WeChat warriors in the trial of Peter Liang” – Amerasia Journal, Voume 45, Number 2, 2019
  Written by Mark Tseng-Putterman F’22, Doctoral Candidate, American Studies, Brown University, and Yuanyuan Feng
• “Transnationalism and Asian American Performance” – Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, February 28, 2020
  Written by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, and Director, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program, Northwestern University
• “Trial without Jury in Guam, USA” – Law and History Review, 38(4), June 26, 2019
  Written by Katherine Unterman F’19, Associate Professor of History, Texas A&M University
• “To Write in Unwellness: Documenting A/P/A Voices” – Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 25, Number 3, 2022
  Written by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark, Crystal Baik, Vivian Truong, Minju Bae, Preeti Sharma, Lena Sze, Amita Manghnani, and Mi Hyun Yoon
• “9 Where is the Reciprocity? Notes on Solidarity from the Field” – Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 25, Number 2, 2022
  Written by Naoko Shibusawa F’04, Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of American Studies, Brown University

BOOKS

• A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American Civil Rights in the South (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020)
  Written by Stephanie Hinnershitz F’12, Curriculum Content and Research Advisor, Bill of Rights Institute and the Air Force’s eSchool of Professional Military Education
• America’s Vietnam: The Longue Durée of U.S. Literature and Empire (Temple University Press, 2018)
  Written by Marguerite Nguyen F’18, Associate Professor, English, Wesleyan University
• Beyond Hawai’i: Native Labor in the Pacific World (University of California Press, 2018)
  Written by G. Samantha Rosenthal F’14, Associate Professor of History, Coordinator of the Public History Concentration, Roanoke College
• Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress (University of Michigan Press, 2018)
  Written by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Theatre, Northwestern University
• Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842- 1943 (University of California Press, 2013)
  Written by Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• The First Amerasians: Mixed Race Koreans from Camptowns to America (Oxford University Press, 2024)
  Written by Yuri W. Doolan F’23, Assistant Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Chair, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies Program, Brandeis University
• Foreign Accents: Chinese American Verse from Exclusion to Postethnicity (Oxford University Press, 2010)
  Written by Steven Gene Yao F’05, Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of English, Hamilton College
• Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley (Oxford University Press, 2013)
  Written by Cecilia M. Tsu F’18, Associate Professor, History, University of California, Davis
• Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace (Yale University Press, 2019)
  Written by Tamara Venit-Shelton F’17, Associate Professor, History, Claremont McKenna College
• Identity, Youth, and Gender in the Korean American Church (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)
  Written by Christine Hong F’15, Assistant Professor of Educational Ministry, Director of DEdMin Program, Columbia Theological Seminary
• The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life (Riverhead Books/Penguin Random House, 2022)
  Written by Simran Jeet Singh F’18, Executive Director, Religion & Society Program, The Aspen Institute
• Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University Press, 2015)
  Written by Viet Thanh Nguyen F’11, Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature, Aerol Arnold Chair of English, University of Southern California; Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage (Smithsonian Books, 2004)
  Written by Gail Dubrow F’15, Professor of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Public Affairs & Planning, and History, Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians, University of Minnesota, and Donna Graves
• Suburban Empire: Cold War Militarization in the US Pacific (University of California Press, 2022)
  Written by Lauren Hirshberg F’12, F’10, Associate Professor of History, Regis College
• The Unsung Great: Stories of Extraordinary Japanese Americans (University of Washington Press, 2020)
  Written by Greg J. Robinson F’04, Professor, History, l’Université du Québec à Montréal

BOOK CHAPTERS

• “Asian American New Orleans” – New Orleans: A Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
  Written by Marguerite Nguyen F’18, Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University
• “Onoto Watanna” – Asian American Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students (Greenwood/Praeger, 2021)
  Written by Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• “Like We Lost Our Citizenship” – Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South (University of Illinois Press, 2013)
  Written by Marguerite Nguyen F’18, Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University
• “Refugee Pastoralism: Vietnamese American Self-Representation in New Orleans” – Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity (Duke University Press, 2019)
  Written by Marguerite Nguyen F’18, Associate Professor of English, Wesleyan University
• “Waterscapes of Puget Sound: Japanese American Women in the Pacific Northwest” – Home Lands: How Women Made the West (University of California Press, 2010)
  Written by Gail Dubrow F’15, Professor of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Public Affairs & Planning, and History, Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians, University of Minnesota
•  “5. Surveillance Effects: South Asian, Arab, and Afghan American Youth in the War on Terror” – At the Limits of Justice (University of Toronto Press, 2020)
  Written by Greg J. Robinson F’04, Professor, History, l’Université du Québec à Montréal

DIGITAL EXHIBITS

• “Becoming Texans, Becoming Americans” Oral History Project
  Created by Betsy Brody F’21, Professor of Political Science, Collin College
• “CHINA COMES TO MIT: A History of the First Chinese Students: 1877-1931”
  Created by Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• “Digging In: How Food, Culture, and Class Shape the Story of Asian Dallas”
  Created by Betsy Brody F’21, Professor of Political Science, Collin College
• “Out of the Desert: Resilience and Memory in Japanese American Internment”
  Collaboratively created by Corey Masao Johnson F’23, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC

JOURNALS

• Pacific Arts
  Co-edited by Maggie Wander F’21, Senior Research Associate, Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art

ORAL HISTORY / RADIO

• Center for Oral History: Hear from the voices of Hawaiʻi’s past – Hawaiʻi Public Radio, 2022-2023
  Supported by an ACLS Sustaining Public Engagement Grant, shared by Micah Mizukami G’22, Associate Director, Center for Oral History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

PODCASTS

• “Episode 1” – In Residence Podcast, Mass Humanities, April 16, 2020
  Conversation with Emma J. Teng F’06, Director, Global Languages, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

RESOURCE LIST

• Asian American Reading List
  Created by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark

VIDEOS

• “On Community Care: Documenting A/P/A Voices During COVID-19”
  Co-developed by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark, in collaboration with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University
• “Designing for Pacific Politics” – Virtual Lecture with UCLA Architecture and Urban Design
  Featuring Kelema Lee Moses F’19, Assistant Professor, Architectural History, Occidental College

Resources Recommended by ACLS Fellows

ARTICLES

• Diaz, Vicente M, and J Kēhaulani Kauanui. “Native Pacific Cultural Studies on the Edge” – The Contemporary Pacific, 13(2), Fall 2001
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Earle, Harriet E. H. “A New Face for an Old Fight: Reimagining Vietnam in Vietnamese-American Graphic Memoirs” – Studies in Comics, 9(1), June 2018
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Firth, Stewart. “Future Directions for Pacific Studies” – The Contemporary Pacific, 15, 2003
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Jafri, Beenash. “Asian American Cowboys and Native Erasure” – Reappropriate, September 29, 2022
  Recommended by Hsuan L. Hsu F’18, F’12, Professor of English, University of California, Davis
• Kauvaka, Lea Lani Kinikini. “Berths and Anchorages: Pacific Cultural Studies from Oceania” – The Contemporary Pacific, 28(1), 2016
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Man, Simeon. “Anti-Asian violence and US imperialism” Race & Class, Volume 62, Number 2, 2020
  Recommended by Mark Tseng-Putterman F’22, Doctoral Candidate, American Studies, Brown University
• Taylor, Nora A. “Re-authoring images of the Vietnam War: Dinh Q Lê’s ‘Light and Belief’ installation at dOCUMENTA (13) and the role of the artist as historian” – South East Asia Research, 25(1), 2017
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Teaiwa, Teresia K. “L(o)osing the Edge” – The Contemporary Pacific, 13(2), 2001
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Wesley-Smith, Terence. “Rethinking Pacific Islands Studies” – Pacific Studies, 18(2), June 1995
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa

• Wesley-Smith, Terence. “Rethinking Pacific Studies Twenty Years On” – The Contemporary Pacific, 28(1), 2016
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. “Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical Crossroads” – Amerasia Journal, 21(1-2), 1995
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University

BOOKS

• Arvin, Maile. Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania (Duke University Press, 2019)
  Recommended by Corey Masao Johnson F’23, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
• Bald, Vivek. Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard University Press, 2015)
  Recommended by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark
• Chan, Sucheng. The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New Beginnings (Temple University Press, 2006)
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Fujino, Diane C. and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez. Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation (University of Washington Press, 2022)
  Recommended by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark
• Espiritu, Yen Le. Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees (University of California Press, 2014)
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Fujiwara, Lynn and Shireen Roshanravan, editors. Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics (University of Washington Press, 2018)
  Recommended by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, and Director, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program, Northwestern University
• Hauʻofa, Epeli. We Are the Ocean: Selected Works (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2008)
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Hong Sohn, Stephen. Inscrutable Belongings: Queer Asian North American Fiction (Stanford University Press, 2018)
  Recommended by Corey Masao Johnson F’23, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
• Hune, Shirley and Gail M. Nomura, editors. Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women (New York University Press, 2020)
  Recommended by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, and Director, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program, Northwestern University
• Iyer, Deepa. We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press, 2017)
  Recommended by Diane Wong F’23, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark
• Kim, Helen Jin. Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire (Oxford University Press, 2022)
  Recommended by Corey Masao Johnson F’23, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
• Lee, Erika. The Making of Asian America: A History, First Edition (Simon & Schuster, 2015)
  Recommended by Corey Masao Johnson F’23, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
• Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 1996)
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Min, Susette. Unnamable: The Ends of Asian American Art (New York University Press, 2018)
  Recommended by Hsuan L. Hsu F’18, F’12, Professor of English, University of California, Davis
• Santa Ana, Jeffrey, Heidi Amin-Hong, Rina Garcia Chua, and Zhou Xiaojing, editors. Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific (University of Michigan Press, 2022)
  Recommended by Hsuan L. Hsu F’18, F’12, Professor of English, University of California, Davis
• Spickard, Paul, Joanne Rondilla, and Debbie Hippolite Wright. Pacific Diasporas: Island Peoples in the United States and Across the Pacific (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002)
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Indigenous Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa 
• Valverde, Caroline Kieu Linh. Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora. (Temple University Press, 2012)
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Vilsoni, Hereniko and Rob Wilson, editors. Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999)
  Recommended by Craig S. Perez F’20, Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Islands Studies & The Politics Program, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa
• Wu, Ellen D. The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, (Princeton University Press, 2015)
  Recommended by Corey Masao Johnson F’23, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC

BOOK CHAPTERS

• Oishi, Eve. “Screen Memories: Fakeness in Asian American Media Practice” – F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University
• Sturken, Marita. “Absent Images of Memory: Remembering and Reenacting the Japanese Internment” – Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s) (Duke University Press, 2001)
  Recommended by Mallory Nanny F’20, Doctoral Candidate, Art History, Florida State University